Let's Decide What We Want First

January 1, 2001|By HUGH FLOMENHOFT and WILLIAM B. BROWN

Perhaps it is time to approach voting with the same sense of purpose as one uses to design an airplane, computer software, or any other new complex system. Voting in elections, as we now know, is serious business with important consequences, and we want to make sure it works correctly for every eligible citizen.

We read with dismay that some people are ready to immediately scrap the current punch-card voting system in Palm Beach County in favor of the "mark sense" system used in many places in Florida and the United States.

In our opinion this is a precipitous action. How can you "buy" something if you don't know what you're looking for? If we don't know what we want the new voting system to accomplish, how will we know if it works? The first thing we need to do as a community here in Palm Beach County and as a society is decide what we want the system to do and decide what level of performance we want it to achieve. How else will we know if the new system is meeting our goals?

In developing complex systems, engineers start with a "requirements definition." This allows everyone to agree that this defines what we want the new system to accomplish.

First, we need to define the scope of the system. Initially we suggest it should include confirmation of eligibility to vote, but not the entire registration process. The system should include domestic absentee and early voting, as well as military and overseas absentee voting. The system should also include Election Day procedures and then, finally, the methods for registering and tabulating the votes.

If we are in agreement on the scope, then let's move to some of the more prominent requirements. We want a voting system that will not allow undervotes. One change here will be to the ballot, adding a new category of "None of the Above" or "Neither". Now there is no excuse for not answering each and every ballot question.

The next requirement is to prevent overvotes and also spoiling a ballot. The voter must not be allowed to finalize his ballot with an overvote anywhere on it.

The system should also be able to accommodate different languages and disabilities.

Another requirement must be that the voting system must allow for easy validation of a voter who has moved, and hopefully allow voting while outside of your home precinct.

Also, to provide an audit trail, the system should provide a printed record of each vote for both the Supervisor of Elections office and for the voter. Although in this day and age everything is electronic, there always has to be a backup plan.

Printed with an anonymous serial number printed at random, the voter's receipt would verify to the voter who they voted for and also allow them to inspect the supervisor's records to see that their vote was in fact counted.

The system should also ensure an easy way for election officials to verify the identity of the voters and that they are on the voter rolls. This should not depend on a centralized control system in case of communications failures or overload. We saw what happened in Palm Beach County, where clerks were required to call in to verify eligibility if a voter had married or moved within the county. With over 500 precincts, the central office was quickly overwhelmed with calls.

And the final requirement of a voting system is that it should meet international standards of quality; these will allow the voting system to be audited and provide a third-party evaluation of the quality of our voting system.

We don't expect perfection from our voting system; however, we would like to strive "six sigma" performance, or fewer than 3.4 errors per million voters who were eligible and tried to vote. If we can achieve this, we will have gone a long way to meet our democratic ideals of enfranchising all citizens.

This is just a small part of the requirements for defining a new voting system, but this kind of analysis provides citizens some insight as to what they should demand from any new voting system.

Dr. Hubert I. Flomenhoft is an aeronautical engineer from MIT and a retired engineering manager who worked on the Patriot missile at Raytheon. William B. Brown is a nuclear engineer who served on board U.S. nuclear submarines during the Cold War, and now works as a manufacturing consultant. They are from Palm Beach Gardens.